Nintendo jumps on the greenwagon

In honor of today’s launch of Chibi-Robo(tm): Park Patrol for the portable Nintendo DS(tm), Nintendo is offering 500 tree seedlings to kids who want to help keep their environments clean and beautiful. Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol is one of the first games based on the growing environmental movement, and it’s a great way to get kids and their parents on a green path.

That is from a press release. Usually, press releases contain PR spin. That is PR spin.

Kermit was way ahead of his time, because there’s nobiggerfad right now than being green. Me, i don’t care for it. Don’t quite believe it’s anything more than a business market fueled by guilt and scare tactics. Maybe there’s some good will in there, but i’m not convinced. Leave it to the audience-expanding Nintendo to, shockingly, call shotgun on the wagon of environmentalism with Chibi-Robo. Because they’re hip and modest and indie and care about the Earth now. They ride their bikes to work just like everybody else.

My problem is that the company is promising to distribute 500 seedlings to children as a way to celebrate the green movement. (Nevermind that the children have to register as a way to qualify for the random drawing, which is creepy.) 500 seedlings? Talk about a paper tiger. Nintendo probably felled that many adult trees just to fax the release to news rooms around the country.

This half-hearted effort makes the public (me, included) skeptical of any subsequent green-oriented news announcements. Here’s an idea, Nintendo: How about making a real commitment (no registration required) to plant one tree for every copy of Chibi Robo you sell? That’d at least show a modicum of commitment. Or better yet, one for every DS sold this year. That would be worth a press release.

Ah ok, they’re celebrating the green movement… Must we remind you how much useless plastic they waste? Don’t believe buy into the hype.

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The 500 tree seedlings was a pathetic PR attempt that somehow became startlingly succesful. I mean seriously, 500 trees? And its not like they’re supervising the tree planting or anything, for chrissakes.

It’s still good to know that they do a lot of recycling in house and that this is a fashionable trend, but obviously much more needs to be done before you can really call yourself a “green” company.

While it is kind of alarming the rate at which we are losing forests, especially the rain forests, most of these “green movements” are purely symbolic. There is simply no way a single company can plant trees where they are needed at the same rate at which they are being cut down these days without going financially belly up!

The only way you can stop deforestation where it counts is by fixing the economy of the Third World countries where this deforestation is taking place. The problem is more political than it is moral…

Fuckin hate the green movement personally. It’s a buncha self-righteous yuppie motherfuckers having one more thing to be snobby over. It’s beyond stupid, no matter how “morally just” it may be.

I saw somewhere that we actually have more forests now than we did at the turn of the 20th century, but you keep saying “where it counts” so i dunno. I’m not too knowledgeable on the subject. What you said about it being political makes sense.

“Where it counts” is in the rain forests, which are the source of the majority of the oxygene in the planet…

It doesn’t really matter if the U.S. suddenly doubles its number of trees in its National Parks, the rain forests are still being uprooted at more than twice that pace. But I’m not about to send kids deep into the Congo or Brazil jungles to plant trees! 😉

The gorillas (gor ee yas) will get them… and recruit them to fight against the political war machine. Che and Rage Against the Machine in full swing. They have a kick as health care plan, pay fro college and you can play golf on the weekends. Too bad the golf course was a rain forest yesterday. Fuck it,lets plant some land mines for the dozer’s.

I want to play a game where I get to fight deforestation. How come captain planet was so gay. Is being environmentally friendly make you queer? I think Captain Planet was created by big time polluters to make the hippies look even gayer. I got them back though. I pictured the Swed and Gi getting it on lesbian style and counters the gayness of the show. I always wanted to roll a pizza up like a burrito and eat it. fuck yeah.

That’s a great game idea! I would take that more seriously than Chibi-Robo. Fighting deforestation all straight-faced and loony-toony, but with heavy undertones of guilt for how we should treat the planet. I can picture it perfectly.